Latvia votes for EU membership

12:01AM BST 22 Sep 2003

Latvia, the last of the 10 prospective new members to vote on joining the European Union, has voted Yes to the proposal.

The EU vote, which attracted a turnout of 72.5 per cent in the small Baltic nation of 2.3 million, saw 67 per cent vote yes and 32.3 per cent vote no. "For Latvia this is putting the final full stop to the sequels of the second world war, and wiping out forever the divisions on the map of Europe that the odious Molotov-Ribbentrop pact . . . placed there," said President Vaira Vike-Freiberga.

Latvia's weekend vote confirmed the EU enlargement from 15 to 25 member countries and came after disappointment in Brussels after Sweden rejected the euro. "We welcome a country that naturally belongs to us and we trust, that Latvia, as the other future member states, will enrich and strengthen the European Union. Welcome home, Latvia!" said the European enlargement commissioner, Gunter Verheugen.

Malta, Slovenia, Hungary, Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Estonia have already voted to join the EU. The 10th nation to join, Cyprus, is not holding a referendum.

But the victory may be cold comfort for the Latvian prime minister, Einars Repse, whose Right-wing coalition now appears in danger of collapse.

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Many of Latvia's pro-Brussels voters hailed EU membership as the crowning achievement of the ex-Soviet satellite's return to Europe after more than a decade of painful reforms since independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

Under secret protocols of a non-aggression pact signed in 1939 by the Soviet and Nazi German foreign ministers, Molotov and von Ribbentrop, the then independent Latvian state fell under Soviet control and Poland was partitioned.